One of my very first introductions into NFTs [non-fungible tokens] was bananakin showing me female artists that had been in the art space for many years – Stellabelle was quite high on that list and I was instantly impressed and sucked in by all of the uniqueness in her works. I quickly realized art did not have to mean traditional. From that point on, I was digging around and watching little pieces of magic being born.
While I’ve been creating in different outlets my entire life, it was nice to jump into an already established community, feel as a newbie would, but also feel quite welcomed. Stellabelle was one of the first to follow me back from NFT Twitter and it meant a lot to just get a feel for how she seemed to be herself. Keeping people on their toes by saying what she meant and creating art that makes you not only do a second take but take a much closer look and get your focus right on point.
Art That Turns Heads
I truly should not have been surprised when Stella started posting these golden digital frames on Twitter. The art inside them being handmade in a way that will make your mind combust, aka I was hooked.
Stellabelle is an artist, writer, and voxels creator. She’s a big inspiration for me wanting to create in CryptoVoxels and just allowing my thoughts and feelings to find their way onto the page, whether paper or digital. CryptoStellas is an immerse satirical art collection that quite literally says “I hate crappy PFP projects” [profile photos] while teaching lessons in cultural references.
I did mean literally – here’s Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music #53 wearing CryptoStella #32: The Great 10K PFP Plague of 2021 on her shirt!
See what I mean? Art that will make you think, do research [dYoR, aM i RIghT?], or at least lead you to read the freaking descriptions that she’s written for each one of these thought-out pieces. When it comes to who is next, there’s no way to know because she’s coming for everyone. Spock, Veruca Salt, and Oprah included.
Puzzling, Yet Creative Times
The true reason she’s an original in this industry largely has to do with her wanting to help others. Stella built a site and hid random objects so others could find them, inspired by CoinArtist’s NFT puzzles. This led to not quite a sloth, not quite a unicorn popping up from a meme – Slothicorn was born! Stella helped bring it further to life with Creative Commons, as the original creator has never been named.
The Slothicorn community was based on the Steem blockchain. Steem [steemit.com] is where Stella would host contests and the participating artists would submit all of their art, remixes, or envision their kind of Slothicorn. The community members would upvote which pieces they enjoyed. The big difference with these upvotes was the artists were getting paid. For a Creative Commons project, this would seem to be one of the first times this ever happened. Creative Commons can be a little confusing because you have to know what art can and can’t be used for, however, it can greatly bring eyes to projects. Though a lot of [read: most] art is not Creative Commons.
While there is a definite “aww, that’s such an adorable Slothicorn” element to it, those claws leave much to be desired. Stella has mentioned the claws can be a reminder that bad money is out there. She also references them back to the 2008 recession, which hit her hard personally, and that’s something I can relate to as well.
To launch the Creative Commons community, the group hosted a Create Your Own Slothicorn art competition with a giveaway [a Ledger Nano was very smartly included] at the end of 2017. The community also created multiple contests the following year to get even more artists involved in learning about cryptocurrency and art. While looking into the background for Slothicorn, I scrolled through Stella’s Discord channels because I remembered her saying it was from those days. Just as she’s creating history with each CryptoStella, some of the older Discord channels are a piece of Slothicorn’s Creative Commons history. You can see people that were in the community then were learning about cryptocurrency, cryptoart, and they were also willing to help out others who had questions.
Wearing All Hats (And Wearables)
Stella puts so much time and energy into each piece she creates and that flows into her CryptoVoxels galleries. I’ve been fortunate to visit a couple and seeing the current CryptoStellas hanging around in one place was a really cool experience. [As of this writing, the gallery is still up.] Not only did she host three giveaways during the launch party, but Stellabelle also mints other artists’ CryptoVoxel wearables because that’s what she can do to help out. [If you don’t own land, you can’t mint.] Plus there was a Twitter Spaces chat during the party where so much insight was given into the current CryptoStellas project.
In true Stellabelle fashion, the Slothicorn CryptoStella has gems hidden in there – the creation year, unicorn earrings, “educating artists” swirled within the hair, actual Slothicorn artwork as the outfit, a unibrow, plus the teal mask Stellabelle has been using for project updates on the main character and also on the Mona Lisa. I mean, I know I’m late to finding out about and loving the Slothicorn, but I am in! There’s a rainbow on the stomach of one – what’s not to love?
It’s been a journey for me to watch her artwork come together over the past year, plus to now find out so much more while learning about the Slothicorn community and what she’s done for the cryptocurrency/art world in general. From educating others to doing what she could to provide income for Creative Commons artists, that speaks a lot about the type of person she is, all while having a mess of fun laughing at some really, really crappy 10K PFP projects, “influencers”, and the world as a whole.
During the CryptoStellas launch, it was announced that they were under Creative Commons as well! Another level of fun to the innovative project.
Major thanks to Stellabelle for having another amazing giveaway. You better believe I have all my claws crossed in hopes to earn the elusive Slothicorn CryptoStella.
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Sources:
https://medium.com/hackernoon/could-slothicorn-become-the-ultimate-funding-solution-for-creative-commons-crypto-artists-6ff7dbd6d44e
https://thelatestblock.com/down-the-nft-rabbit-hole-part-2